


As Hounds Run

by reinkist



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Actual D&D Monster, Actual D&D Spells, Blood and Injury, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: e060-066 The Stolen Century Parts 1-7, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, Locked room scenario, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post Episode 63, Slow Burn, Suspense, Violence, but it's in the Stolen Century so, concussion, nonlinear, there'll be dice rolled for this fic you just wait
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-08 07:22:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13453278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reinkist/pseuds/reinkist
Summary: Ten long months have gone by on an uninhabited planet. The Light's been recovered, so all that's left to do is to stew in abject boredom and wait for the Hunger to descend. Taako and Magnus find out the hard way, though, that the planet might not be as empty as it seems.





	1. Chapter 1

Sparks fizzled and spiraled up out of the bonfire until they were swallowed completely by the opaque sky. Malformed shadows twisted and flickered over the strange, bulbous basalt formations in a rhythm that, infuriatingly, reminded Taako of the ocean. The only light came from the fire itself. This world had no moon, and no stars.

Well, technically, it did. It had three moons and pretty much the same number of stars as any of the worlds on any of the planes, but the atmosphere was so dense that they weren't visible. It was such a mindfuck to have to remember that the yawning emptiness in the sky wasn't a lack of something, but an overabundance.

It was also hot as a damn oven. During the day the sun hung like the glint off a gold coin in the hazy orange sky, almost dim enough to look at head on. There was hardly any risk of sunburn in this place, but gods above, was the humidity a killer. Despite all that constant moisture, the world was anything but lush. There weren't even any decent-tasting plants or animals. Vegetation was sparse and kind of slimy and took fucking forever to chew. The small rodents that lived in the nooks and crannies of the basalt were gamey and stringy, and their predators, the birds that nested in the crags of the mountain, were leathery and foul. There were plenty of fish in the thrashing, black ocean, but they were so oily as to be practically inedible. It was only through desperate application of transmutation magic and a liberal amount of spices that made any of it at all tolerable to put anywhere near anyone's mouth.

They only had two months left on this hell planet, and Taako could not fucking wait to leave. If they hadn't already found the Light of Creation, at this point he would have straight up demanded that they give up and let the Hunger put this world out of its fucking misery.

As it were, though, they had two months left in this reality, and absolutely nothing to do.

Taako was lying on a bedroll just outside of the bubble of heat around the firepit. His hair was twisted up off his neck, but loose strands still stuck to his face with sweat. It was almost unbearably hot, even at night, even in shorts and a sleeveless shirt. Even on top of a layer of the softest, most body-conforming foam that he could possibly transmute, he could still feel the knobs and bumps of the basalt like he was lying directly on top of it. Everywhere his body touched the bedroll was sweltering and damp. Dinner had been unsatisfying at best, and it still sat unpleasantly in his stomach like it too had been made out of rock. The salty, rotting smell of the ocean, thirty yards away and over a cliff, didn't help.

He tried to relax and let his mind sink into the recollection of that one dish he'd had in Tesseralia. It was a comforting, habitual pattern, etched into his mind like the groove formed by a trickle of water rushing endlessly over a rock, but this time his thoughts wouldn't align. They wouldn't fit, thrusting out protesting limbs like a cat being forced into a box. The fact that he couldn't even be soothed by a thought that almost always served to soothe him made Taako's mood even worse.

Lup shrieked with laughter and caught the rock headed for her face with a levitation spell. "That's cheating!" Magnus bellowed, and threw another one. She caught it neatly in midair with her hand this time and winged it back at Magnus's head. He flung himself to the side, roaring victoriously as it narrowly missed clipping his ear.

They'd been playing this indecipherable rock throwing game all fucking evening, and Taako was about to kill them both. Neither of them ever seemed inclined to lose steam about anything, especially when a competition was involved, so the game had been going on for far longer than any game could possibly remain interesting. And yet, there they were, still flinging rocks at each other and tittering like children.

Barry was sitting propped up against a basalt formation, cheering them on, contributing wholeheartedly to the noise. Davenport was snoring on another bedroll beside the fire, somehow completely oblivious to all of this. Lucretia was scribbling in her journal, and Taako wondered with a bite of sarcasm if she had a better idea of the rules of this game than he did. Merle had already vanished into Parlay months ago, just as he had over so many previous years. Lup feigned throwing a rock. Magnus flinched. She did it again, and they both laughed uproariously.

Taako flopped onto his back and threw an arm over his eyes. Lup and Magnus had become a lot better friends this cycle after working together so closely to recover the Light. It wasn't something that bothered him, because neither he nor Lup got jealous of each others' friendships or relationships, not even before, at home. That wasn't how shit worked, and that wasn't what ...

A holler from Magnus startled Taako into looking back. The rock Lup had finally thrown had smacked Magnus square in the shoulder, and this seemed to signal the beginning of some sort of wrestling phase of the game. Magnus barrelled towards her, yelling and laughing, and Lup flipped supernaturally up into the air and out of the way. She came down sideways on top of his shoulders, forcing him to the ground, yelling, "Moonsault, motherfucker!"

Taako smirked.

Lup and Magnus could be friends all they wanted. It wasn't that. It was just this sort of ... aura of intuitive physicality that they both shared, and that Taako had just never quite been able to connect with. Lup had always been like that -- she had always been so much more present, somehow, in the moment. She occupied space like there was no question that it belonged to her, and Taako loved that about her so much that it hurt.

It felt good as fuck right then to feel sorry for himself, though, so Taako glared into the empty sky and felt left out, far too hot, and extremely dissatisfied about absolutely everything.

Magnus roared out a triumphant "Ha ha!" over a bunch of vague scrabbling. He let out a dismayed yelp seconds later, and everything else was drowned out by Lup's cackling and Barry's enthusiastic, "Yeah!"

Taako considered just giving up and going to bed, but they'd all been cooped up in the Starblaster for months on the expedition to recover the Light. They'd only just gotten back to dry land two days ago. His desire to be anywhere but inside the fucking ship warred with his desire to be anywhere else but where he was.

The stickiness between his back and the bedroll tipped the decision. He shoved himself off the ground and onto his feet, his hair unraveling from the loose knot he'd twisted it into. He swept it up off his neck, and grimaced as it stuck to his back. "Later, assholes," he called across the firepit. Lucretia barely looked up from her writing. Lup waved with the hand that was not shoving Magnus's face into the ground, knee planted in between his shoulder blades.

"Night, babe!" she called. Magnus echoed her and waved as best he could. Barry let out a startled little, "Oh!" and waved, too. Of fucking course they all had to be so nice about it. Taako begrudgingly waved back and stalked off towards the ship.

Until the next cycle, it was the last time Taako would see most of them alive.

The inside of the ship was as sterile looking as ever with its hospital lighting and chrome plating, but it was blessedly room temperature. Taako turned down the corridor towards his quarters, the floor cool against his bare feet. He hesitated at the door, hand on the latch, and changed his mind. He headed towards the kitchen.

The lights flickered on when he opened the door, and Taako smacked a hand to his forehead. Dishes were stacked high in the sink and crowded the counter all around it. The island in the center was full of mixing bowls. The table was still littered with their supper dishes. He'd almost forgotten what a fucking disaster it was in here.

Oh well. He could just bully Magnus or Barry into doing the dishes in the morning.

Taako opened the cabinet above the stove, pushing spice jars out of the way until he found the two he was looking for. They were both from Tesseralia. None of the spices he'd brought from there had been particularly special -- he'd picked most of them up from the corner store below the apartment he'd shared with Lup. The jars weren't even nice, and they didn't even match. They were cheap glass with ill-fitting lids and yellowing labels covered in script he couldn't read.

He unscrewed the caps from both and held them under his nose.

And ...

There.

The memory that he'd been trying to sink into before flared, bright, in his mind. A dish like nothing else he'd ever tasted, with flavors no food he'd had before had ever thought to combine. The memory of a tug like a crooked finger at the core of him, the memory that there was someone, somewhere, gods knew where, that he was bound to -- someone that his life was heading for as surely as an arrow towards a target ...

He screwed the lids back on the jars and returned them to the cabinet, disappointment rushing in to fill the space the bliss of the memory had left. Every time he accessed it like this the memory became weaker, less legible, like a copy of a copy of a copy. Taako was actively participating in its gradual disappearance with his own lack of self control.

He turned the light off on the sprawling mess and retired to his quarters.

He just needed to be alone for a bit.

\---

_ The black ocean tumbled over and over itself, each wave tipped for a moment with a flash of weak gold from the sun before it fell. It was a hypnotizing eternal machinery that would hook Magnus's gaze and hold it for longer than he realized, sometimes. If he craned his neck to look down, as far underneath the window as he possibly could, he would have seen a steady light under the water, its image wavering and glitching on the surface. _

_ "Okay, I'm ready," Lup said. Magnus glanced back at her, over one shoulder. _

_ "Oh, okay. Sweet." _

_ They were in the main lounge area at the back end of the ship. Three of the four walls were windows, only a couple of feet shy of floor to ceiling. Magnus tramped across the chrome plating, between the couches and the tables, and once again took his place in front of her. _

_ "Can't promise you won't die," Lup said, the edge of her grin gleaming white, her eyes luminous and half lidded. _

_ Magnus puffed up his chest. "Bring it on." They both laughed. Lup gave him a playful little shove, hand planted for a moment in his shoulder. Magnus bumped her with one elbow. _

_ "Okay, okay. Get ready." She narrowed her eyes, brow furrowing in that particular way it did when she was spellcasting, her lips moving with an incantation. Magnus wondered for the millionth time what it would be like to be able to use magic in the same way he sometimes wondered what it would be like to be an animal with a tail. _

_ The sensation of what must have been the intended telepathic bond wrapped around his mind. Lup's mind nudged his, then shoved closer. They molded into each other like two pieces of chewed bubblegum, and satisfaction flared from her like the flame from a blowtorch. Lup had her eyes shut, now. That crease of concentration was still stark on her forehead, but one corner of her mouth was curling upwards. _

_ A barrier shimmered into existence around Magnus's body, not completely transparent, but almost. It warped the light a little here and there, like particularly clear ice. It wasn't cold, though. It had no temperature at all. When Magnus tried to move, it gave a little and stayed that way, like the skin of a ripe fruit. _

_ "That's right. Move," directed Lup. "Reach out." _

_ Magnus did as she asked and raised his arms. As he pressed his hands against the barrier, it stretched and molded around them like long, thick winter gloves. He flexed his fingers. It wasn't the most dextrous he'd ever been, but it would be enough. _

_ Satisfaction, triumph, and pride absolutely glowed from Lup, and Magnus gave her a slow thumbs-up. _

_ "You know I had to physically shape the barrier so you could do that, right?" Lup pointed at his upraised thumb. "With my own mind?" Magnus laughed. _

_ Hell yeah. This was totally going to work. _

_ They were totally going to be able to do this. _

\---

When Taako snapped into awareness, it was at the sound of an explosion.

He stared wide-eyed at the ceiling. His heart threatened to beat its way out of his chest. Silence yawned in his ears. The sound had been muffled, far away, from outside the ship.

After a few moments Taako relaxed. The memory of the explosion came unstuck a little in his mind. Had it actually happened? Or had he only imagined it?

No, it had definitely been real.

It was probably just Lup. It wouldn't be the first time, and it definitely wouldn't be the last. Taako rolled over onto his side, his heart slowing, reveling in the perfect softness of his mattress and the coolness of his sheets.

The state of calm he'd achieved before, though, was gone. Taako stared at the wall, the crease between his eyebrows deepening. He hadn't been able to hear his crewmates the entire time he'd been resting in the ship, but the fact that he couldn't now had planted an unreasonable seed of unease in his gut. Of course he couldn't hear anything. What was he expecting, another explosion?

Whatever he was waiting for never came. Nothing but silence met his ears. The longer it stretched on the worse it seemed, even though there was no reason to think anything had happened. What could possibly have happened? It was fully two months before the Hunger would arrive. What, had all the shitty little rodents finally decided to organize?

Taako flung off his blanket and shoved himself to his feet, gripped by the desire to go yell at them for disturbing him. He stepped into a pair of low boots that at some point he'd kicked off beside the bed, tugging each of them on the rest of the way with a finger crooked in their backs. He'd go down there and tell them off. He and Lup would bicker about it for a bit about it until the perfect opportunity arose for Taako to make a dramatic exit, riding on the swell of a really good zinger. After a bit, Lup would follow him inside. She'd follow him into the kitchen, and maybe they could banish all the dirty dishes to some demiplane somewhere until later and do some baking. Whatever they made would pretty much completely have to be made out of conjured or transmuted ingredients, but the point wouldn't be the finished product, anyway. Lup would understand. She always did.

His wand was on the bedside table. He grabbed it.

There was nothing but yawning blackness out the front windows of the ship. He leaned into the glass, trying to get a glimpse of the firepit below, the long, loose ends of his hair brushing the control panel. It was a bad angle. He couldn't see.

The boarding stairs always took fucking forever to lower. Taako didn't even wait for it to finish. Heat hit him in a tangible wave as he ducked under the belly of the ship and dropped the last couple of feet, turning in the direction of the firepit. He was just going to ...

The fire was gone.

Taako shrank back against the ship.

The bright pool of light dropped by the open door above him dazzled his eyes and made the blackness around him absolute. He would've heard the others if they came inside. The motor that raised and lowered the stairs made a grinding noise that echoed through the whole hull of the ship. If he hadn't heard that, he definitely would have heard them coming down the hallway to their quarters. The walls were like fucking paper. It was impossible to be perfectly quiet in that hallway, and half the crew never even tried.

Maybe they were all just asleep out here, and decided to put out the fire.

But the explosion ...

Taako tightened his grip on his wand and started in the direction of the firepit. His eyes began to adjust a few paces from the halo of light he'd been bathed in, and he quickened his pace, wand at the ready.

There was no one there. Everyone was gone.

Remnants of the fire were strewn across the ground, completely doused. The bedrolls were flipped and scattered, upside-down over the rocks. The only sound was the constant, distant roar of the ocean, and the ever-present stench of it seemed to cling to the insides of his nostrils. 

"Lup?" he called. His voice came out tiny and hoarse. Scared. He tried again. "Lup! Barry?"

He bent and flipped over one of the bedrolls, and jerked his hand away as if he'd been burned. It came away sticky. His fingertips were black. There was a large, sodden patch soaked into the fabric, as if it had been doused in ink.

Taako scrambled away from it, heart thudding painfully in his chest. "Magnus! Lucretia!" He slipped a little on the rock. The wet patch extended all the way across the ground. "Davenport!"

There was no answer. Taako whirled around in a panic, heart stuttering in his throat, but there was nothing there. Just the black, lumpy piles of basalt and the vast silhouette of the ship, and the plains that stretched out in every direction, fading into the same endless darkness that yawned above him.

The sea roared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a quick thanks to [JessenoSabaku](http://archiveofourown.org/users/JessenoSabaku/pseuds/JessenoSabaku) for coming up with my fucking title for me, and generally being an enormous bro ;0;


	2. Chapter 2

The first coherent thought Magnus managed to piece together was that he had absolutely no idea where he was. His eyes strained against the perfect darkness. Static swam in his vision, as if he had them closed.

His wrist buckled under his weight in a starburst of pain as he tried to push himself up off the ground. He rolled forward into a sitting position, cradling his arm to his chest. At the change in position the dull throb he'd been ignoring in his head sharpened to an agonizing point, and Magnus slumped forward over his knees, wincing, clutching his skull. The air felt almost unbearably hot in his lungs, like it wasn't air he wasn't actually going to be able to breathe. Everything swam.

The side of his hair was damp and sticky, matted down by what could only be blood. When he pulled his hand away from the spot, a wet tackiness remained between his fingers. Magnus's brow knitted sharply. What ... happened?

"Hello?" he tried. His voice was not much more than a hoarse croak. He couldn't escape the pain, now. It bore deeper and deeper into his skull, leaving him shaky and sick. He swallowed thickly. "Hello? Is anybody there?"

Magnus struggled to his feet, fighting upward through the explosion of pain in his head. As his line of sight cleared one of the rock formations, a light in the distance abruptly stabbed straight through his eyes and into his brain. He winced, shielding his eyes against it.

It was the ship.

Oh, thank the gods. He took a step towards it, but his knees buckled under him. He just barely caught himself on the rock, the rough texture of it scraping his forearm. Everything pitched and rolled. Magnus panted into the basalt, sweat breaking out on his forehead.

The ship was just right over there. He only had to make it that far, and then everything was going to be okay.

It was easier this time. He managed to put one foot in front of the other for a good ten feet or so, unsteady on the uneven terrain. It wasn't long, though, before a strange lightness began to fill his head. Blood began to rush in his ears, deafening and sick. All at once, in a rush of dizziness, nothing felt right-side up. He stumbled, and his sense of direction returned in a terrible sense of heaviness, every nerve, every synapse telling him that down was the direction he needed to go.

He tried to fight it.

He couldn't.

Magnus never hit the ground. The air seemed to thicken around him as he fell, catching him neatly in outstretched arms.

\---

_The water stretched beneath them all the way to the horizon, endless and unbroken and black. Magnus balanced himself with one hand on the belly of the ship as he descended the boarding stairs, and when he got to the bottom he caught himself on one of the struts that held them up. The ship hovered over the ocean, the hum of the engine inaudible over the roar of the water. The bottom stair was drenched with spray, only a few feet above the crests of the churning waves._

_Lup joined him, hand on the other strut. They looked down at the water in silence. The Light shone far below, distant but unblinking. Lup reached across the gap and squeezed his hand, her eyes hidden by her hair. Magnus squeezed back, and Lup looked up at him, a grin spreading over her face. The others began to troop down the stairs behind them, and Lup dropped his hand and socked him in the arm._

_"Can't promise you won't die," she said._

_Magnus's grin broadened. "Bring it on." He glanced over his shoulder. The rest of the crew had claimed their positions on the steps. Lucretia was seated near the top, already scribbling in her journal. Barry was seated a short ways up from Lup, spine straight, forearms on his knees. Taako had sprawled out next to him, legs crossed at the ankle, elbows on the step behind him._

_"We're a go," Lup said into the stone of farspeech on a cord around her neck._

_"Roger that," Davenport answered from the bridge, his voice tinny through the stone. "Holding position."_

_As Lup muttered the incantation Magnus's mind was pulled together with hers, like an elastic band had tightened around them both. Confidence shone from her, as steady and bright as the Light below them, confidence in her own abilities, confidence in his strength. Beside it, quarantined but still potentially relevant, were future plans, possible courses of action if things went wrong. Courses of action she could take if something happened, if he didn't make it, and what she would do if she had to start all over again with someone else._

__Everything's going to be fine, _Magnus thought, and Lup answered him with a swell of conviction. The barrier shimmered into existence around his body as he stepped off the stairs and into the sea._

\---

"Magnus!" Taako yelled in a panic, boots pounding against the rock as he ran. Magnus hung in the air, floating limply in the grip of a levitation spell. Taako flung himself over a rock to reach him. The spell Taako had cast moments before to try to sense the minds of the crew turned more and more transparent as all his concentration shifted to holding Magnus up. "You fucking idiots, what did you do?"

Magnus didn't answer. His head lolled on his neck.

Taako looked around frantically. He hadn't heard anyone else. Magnus's thoughts had been so loud, though, confusion and pain and frustration and fear. 

But there'd been nothing else.

Taako dug his fingers into his scalp in rage and indecision. They could be outside the radius of his spell. Maybe they were unconscious, thoughts so deep that Magnus had drowned them all out. Or they were ...

Lup ...

Taako furiously directed Magnus's floating body toward the ship. Eventually he broke out into a run, grabbing a fistful of Magnus's shirt and dragging him along. He just had to make sure this idiot didn't die, and he could cast the spell again.

This wasn't the first time they'd come to regret not having a healer around on a regular basis, and with a surge of righteous irritation Taako was sure it wouldn't be the last. He pulled Magnus into the medical bay, letting go of the levitation spell and dropping him to the bed. Suddenly Merle's absence into Parlay year after year seemed like the epitome of selfishness, and Taako furiously opened all the cabinets looking for bandages, for potions, for anything. He wasn't a ... whoever is supposed to know how to do all this crap, a fucking cleric, or some little shit with a lute, or ... or anyone who spent a lot of time grubbing around in the woods by themselves, maybe, and he never wanted to be. Magnus's face was weird and slack and ashen, his arm hanging limply off the side of the bed. He was bleeding all over the pristine white pillow, and Taako was definitely leaving that for someone else to clean up.

Taako finally found a cabinet that had, probably at one time, been full of healing potions. There weren't a whole lot of them left, though, less than ten, pushed all the way to the back, and Taako found himself even more furious at Merle for not taking the time to figure out how to replenish them. Just because they couldn't die didn't mean that they shouldn't try to, you know, not. Someone still had to stay alive to fly the ship. And what if things changed? What if something knocked them out of the cycle they'd been caught in for almost fifty years, and this dwindling supply of potions was the only thing standing between them and the total annihilation of ... everything?

Magnus was still out cold. Taako shook him by the shoulders. "Magnus?" He shook him more persistently, and when that did nothing, gave his cheek a frantic series of light smacks. "Magnus!"

Magnus's brow twitched. His eyes moved under their lids.

"Magnus!" Taako shook him again, and nearly jumped out of his skin when Magnus dragged in a giant shuddering breath and tried to sit up. "No, no, fuck you, don't you dare," Taako yelled, and tried to push him back down to the bed as best he could.

"What's going on? Where am I?" Magnus demanded, and clutched at his head, wincing, falling back to the pillow with a groan.

"You're on the ship, numbnuts, and you are completely ruining this pillow with the amount of blood that is coming out of your fucking skull so I need you to just ... "

"What happened?" Magnus said in alarm, staring at his fingers, red with blood, bright and shocking against the sterile white walls.

"I should definitely be the one asking you that," Taako snapped. "Just shut up and drink this." Magnus didn't seem to hear him. He was still staring at his fingers. Taako let out a huff of frustration and shoved Magnus's arm back to the bed. He put a hand behind Magnus's neck, lifting his head, and pressed the opening of the bottle to his lips. Magnus actually fucking cooperated, for once, and drank it down.

After a moment Magnus blinked up at him. Taako pushed the empty potion bottle onto the counter behind him with a shaky exhale. The light was back in Magnus's eyes. The color gradually returned to his face, and Taako didn't try and stop him this time when he tried to sit up.

"Now, what _happened_?" Taako demanded when Magnus's eyes seemed to be able to focus on him. "What did you idiots do?"

Magnus's eyes widened. "What are you talking about?"

Taako's stomach turned over. "What ... What do you remember?" he asked, dread sinking, cold, in his gut.

"What do you ... " Magnus touched the side of his head, expression drawing tight with pain. When he pulled his hand away, his eyes widened. "I'm bleeding?"

"Not anymore," Taako said, impatiently motioning for him to continue. "Come on. Magnus. What's the last thing you remember?"

"I ... don't ... " Magnus's brows knit in earnest confusion. "We had dinner, and built a fire?"

Taako let out a long, unsteady breath. "Stay here," he said, and grabbed his wand up off the counter.

"Where are you going?" Magnus asked as Taako crossed the room, a high edge of confusion in his voice. Taako ignored him and left the medical bay. "Taako! Wait!"

It was so still outside, and apart from the ocean, deathly quiet. Taako sprinted towards the firepit, boots unsteady on the uneven terrain. He was casting the spell before he even got there, magic swelling and building inside him like icing in a piping bag, ready for him to direct into roses, into swirls, into stars.

"Taako?" Magnus shouted from the ship. Taako ignored him, finally coming to a halt in the center of the firepit, raising his hands, muttering an incantation. "Taako! Where are you?"

A dizzying mixture of worry and confusion exploded from behind him, and Taako gritted his teeth in frustration. "Stop feeling things so fucking loud," he yelled back at Magnus, and there was a moment of shocked nothing before the confusion doubled down.

"What?" Magnus yelled. "Where are you? I can't see!" The confusion swirled with uneasiness, then coiled tightly into sharp anxiety. "Where is everybody?"

"Shut up, dummy, I'm trying to find them!"

Magnus shut up.

Taako dropped to a crouch, elbows on his knees, shutting his eyes tight. With concentration he was able to contain Magnus's presence to something like a glowing orb, hanging in the distance. If there was anyone else in the vicinity, he should be able to see them, too, clear as day.

There was nobody.

Taako strained the limits of the spell, trying to reach farther, even a little, but there was nothing. He shoved himself to his feet, the awareness of Magnus's presence dissolving completely as his concentration failed. Taako marched back towards the ship, gripping his wand tightly in one white-knuckled hand.

Magnus was standing at the bottom of the stairs, still absolutely covered in blood. "Get back in the ship," Taako ordered. "We're taking off."

"What?" Magnus's eyes were wide. Taako brushed past him and sprinted up the stairs. "Taako! Wait!"

When he got to the bridge Taako dropped down into the pilot's seat in front of the enormous, empty windows. He began flipping switches, heart fluttering wildly in his throat. The motor that retracted the stairs began to grind below him, reverberations of it vibrating in the control panel, in the floor. The engine began to hum, and there was a telltale shudder as the landing struts folded back into the belly of the ship. Taako closed a hand around the control stick.

"Taako!" Footsteps pounded the floor behind him, and Taako threw the throttle forward. Magnus caught himself on the back of the pilot's seat as the ship lurched into the air. "What are you doing?" Taako slammed the heel of his hand down on a button, and the ground in front of the ship was flooded with light.

\---

In the perfect darkness there was no visible line between the air and the sea. Something somewhere fell and fell until it breached that unseen line and splashed down into the blessed familiarity of the water. Its limbs, one less than before, writhed and contorted in agony.

As the thing drifted deeper and deeper, one particular type of pain receded a little under the soothing touch of the water. It was the sensation a being of another type could have easily defined as "heat", or "burning", but it was a type of pain this creature had never experienced. Its consciousness, unused to danger, unused even to challenge, had already begun to shrink away from the horror of it.

It lay on the bottom of the ocean, the raw energy gleaned from its digestion knitting tissue back together, rapidly scarring over the tattered stump of one limb. Impulses turned and turned inside it like a whirlpool, warring for the first time in its existence. It was unable to flee this place, the source of this unimaginable pain, because there was something it wanted desperately.

The two impulses circled and circled in the dark, twisting deeper into rage, knotting into endless malevolence.

Eventually the pain was gone. A cloud of sand streamed behind it as it pushed away from the sea floor and up toward the surface.

One of the impulses had won.


	3. Chapter 3

"They're gone," Magnus said, slumped over in one of the seats on the bridge, face in his hands. His head throbbed with pain, and the longer it went on the worse it seemed. He was in a fog. Everything was so strange and disjointed. Dreamlike. He dropped his hands, gingerly raising his head. "Taako, they're gone."

Taako didn't answer. He'd already done a full sweep of the island with no results, and had started on a second. The ship pitched as he followed a sharp bend in the coastline, and nausea swam between Magnus's ears. He swallowed against it, breathing labored.

"Taako, they're gone," Magnus said, grief gathering suddenly behind his eyes, aching in his throat. It wasn't just because of their fruitless search that he knew, but he wouldn't have been able to say why. He pushed himself unsteadily to his feet by the armrests of his chair. "Taako ... "

Taako didn't answer. The spotlight followed the coastline, white and stark against the absolute, perfect darkness.

Magnus crossed the bridge, and gripped the back of the pilot's chair for balance. His head swam. "Taako, I'm serious. We need to land."

There was still no answer. Magnus worried at his lip in indecision, then, eyebrows furrowed, reached out and closed his hand over Taako's, over the control stick. Taako didn't fight him as he maneuvered the ship back inland, or when he began to flip the requisite switches to begin the landing sequence, or when he pulled back on the throttle until the ship came to a full stop.

The vibration of the landing struts against the rock jolted through the floor under their feet, and Magnus pulled Taako's hands away from the controls completely. They were so cold. "Did you give me a healing potion? I ... think I need another one," he said, looking down into Taako's downturned face. "Still not feeling so--"

"Top cabinet nearest to the wall," Taako interrupted.

Magnus didn't drop his hands. "Which wall, the left or the--"

"The right." Taako's mouth stretched into a tight line.

"Will you show me? Because ... " Magnus couldn't come up with a good reason other than _I don't want to leave you here alone_ , and snapped his mouth shut. A strange, loaded silence stretched between them. Magnus's head throbbed. Taako finally raised his eyes. Too much of the whites were showing. Magnus braced himself a little for a tirade, a _do I have to do everything myself around here_ , perhaps, or a --

Taako snatched his hands from Magnus's and stood, squeezing past him, boots clicking on the floor. Magnus rushed to follow, eyes on the long tail of Taako's hair, which was swinging back and forth at the small of his back. The adrenaline that had gripped Magnus before was fading in a big way. His head seemed to come a little detached from the rest of him, isolated in its constant pounding ache. It was hard to focus. He put a hand to the wall to steady himself as they continued down the hallway. 

When they got to the medical bay Magnus stopped in his tracks. He stared in shock at the alarming red bloodstain that had spread over the pillow of the small bed.

"Is that mine?" he asked, shrinking back a little.

Taako turned to stare at him for a moment. "What do you think?"

A wave of dizziness came over Magnus, and it swirled sickly with the rush of embarrassment that followed Taako's words. Of course it was. He remembered now. He sank back down onto the bed, breathing heavily. He blinked back to attention at the small crack of the cabinet closing, and looked up to see Taako holding out another potion, eyes turned away. Magnus gratefully took it.

It didn't taste great. They never did. When Magnus lowered the bottle, Taako was standing over him, holding a cloth. Magnus swallowed, and swallowed again to try to get the taste out of his mouth. Taako held the cloth towards him, expectantly. An astringent smell rose from it, and Magnus hesitantly took it.

"You look like complete shit," Taako said, as if by way of explanation.

"Oh," said Magnus. "Thanks."

He began to wipe the blood out of his hair. Taako took the empty bottle from his other hand and put it back on the counter. When he turned back, his eyes froze on Magnus's progress, his eyebrows knitting together.

"Will you just give me that," Taako demanded, after watching him for moment. He marched back toward Magnus with a hand out, and Magnus obeyed, eyes rounding, and dropped the cloth into Taako's outstretched hand.

Magnus stared down at his lap as Taako scrubbed the blood from his hair. Taako had a knee planted on the bed, and Magnus stared absently at the spot where it rucked up the fitted sheet. "Are you okay?" Magnus finally asked, eyes flicking upwards.

"Yeah, I'm fucking great," Taako snapped, and tilted Magnus's head to the side sharply with a severe grip to the top of his skull. "Everything's fucking perfect." He wiped behind Magnus's ear, then down the side of his neck and a little ways under the collar of his shirt. Heat began to crawl up Magnus's neck at his words. What was he supposed to say?

"I'm sorry," Magnus choked out. He didn't even know what he was apologizing for, but the idea that it had been something he had been intending to do had bubbled up suddenly inside him. His eyes burned. "Taako, I am so sorry."

"There." Taako's knee dipped farther into the mattress as he pushed away, and he threw the bloody cloth onto the counter. "There you go." His heels rang on the floor as he marched out of the room, and he didn't look back.

\---

_The silhouette of the ship shrank and shrank as Magnus drifted down through the water, the sun licking behind it like a fire. He felt nothing of the water around him. When he took in one first nervous breath, his every instinct fighting it, screaming suddenly that_ he was underwater _, he was able to breathe just as easily as if would on the surface._

__Rad _, Lup thought, and Magnus agreed. She wished it could have been her down there, and when Magnus frantically did the mental equivalent of shaking his head, she knew, she knew, she was the only one that could protect any of them from the pressure, and if something went wrong ..._

_She knew, okay? She knew._

_Magnus looked down. The Light shone steadily out of the absolute blackness between his feet. Good. He was still perfectly on target. That had been one fear, that there might be underwater currents that would drag him off. They didn't have the equipment to detect that kind of thing, or much of anything that might help them in this situation. The ship wasn't exactly built to have anything to do with water._

_It shrank above him, still surrounded by flickering gold, but the surface of the water was taking up less and less of his field of view. The blackness was swallowing him up, and the thrill of something that wasn't quite terror made the hair stand up on the back of his neck. He knew Lup felt it too, and she flooded his mind with something close to ecstacy, something far-flung and unbearably light, like there were some things in existence that were almost too glorious to bear._

_Magnus laughed and loved the shit out of her._

_The Light was getting closer. Magnus raised his arms a little in preparation and felt the barrier give and stretch in response. Lup was ready._

_There was an illuminated sphere around the Light. As he sank closer Magnus realized that white light was being thrown up the wall of a cliff, and he and Lup realized simultaneously with a thrill that it was one they'd been drifting beside in the perfect darkness for quite some time. When Magnus looked up, half the sky had been blotted out by rim of it._

_He was inside the bubble of light, now, and the closer he drifted downwards the more it was apparent that, one, the light had been caught on a ledge on the side of the cliff, and that two, Magnus was drifting just far enough away the edge of it that his boots would miss it completely._

_Without thinking Magnus tried to swim, but his arms wouldn't move fast enough. The surface of the barrier was thick around them. It felt like swimming through syrup. They'd discovered early on that there was just enough of a lag in the connection between Lup and the barrier, routed through Magnus, that such a quick movement was impossible._

_The edge rushed up a few feet away from Magnus's boots. He wasn't going to hit it. There was no way. He and Lup reached out as quickly as they could, trying to catch themselves on the edge with both arms, but Magnus was too far. He fell past the Light, past the white circle it cast that threw black lines behind the rocks in stark relief, and he looked up just in time to see the the edge of it disappear behind the ledge._

__Fuck, shit! Magnus, fucking ... Shit! _The barrier around Magnus's hands barely scraped against the cliff wall. The two of them bent forward, trying to lean close enough to get some kind of a grip. Magnus's fall slowed, but not enough._

_Suddenly Magnus's entire body was doused with cold. Pressure began to squeeze at his limbs, his chest. His lungs. Lup was fading in his mind, the volume of her internal panic twisting quieter and quieter._

__Magnus!! _Lup screamed. Her thoughts flared and faded completely._

\---

"Taako! Wait!" Magnus's boots sounded in the hallway behind him, but Taako didn't turn.

He didn't know where to go or what to do. The events of the evening swirled in his mind, around and around and around like the contents of a blender, except there was no finished dish in sight. There was no calculated outcome whatsoever, and the ingredients, when assembled, made nothing. Nothing made any sense.

"Wait! Taako!" Magnus had caught up with him. "Where are you going?" Anger bubbled up inside his chest, hotter and hotter, until it boiled over in a scalding rush. Taako clenched his fists, nails biting into his palms.

"What exactly are we supposed to do now?" Taako whirled on him, gesturing savagely at the world at large. "We are useless! We are absolutely fucking useless, Magnus, absolutely fucking ... "

Magnus drew back, eyes widening, and Taako slammed the brakes on his outburst as best he could. He pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to get control over his breathing, anger still roiling and simmering inside him. The hurt on Magnus's face burned in his mind's eye. He hated how hard it always was to be mad at Magnus, how Magnus could get out of almost anything by looking so fucking sorry about it, and how Taako gave him exactly as much leeway as the entire rest of the crew did, which was about as much as they possibly could at all times.

"Forget it," Taako said, dropping his hands to the hems of his shorts. "Just forget it. It's only two months, right? What's two months when you live forever?"

"Taako, you don't have to ... " Magnus trailed off. His face fell. "Please don't."

"What, introduce a little fucking levity to the situation?" Taako's fingers still felt strange and squeaky-clean from the alcohol he'd put on the cloth. He didn't know what to do. He felt so helpless, so far away from himself. "What else am I supposed to do, here, exactly, _Magnus_?" Something terrible and icy had crept into his tone.

"I don't know." Magnus's words were starting to get all stopped up. The corners of his mouth bent further and further downward, and he pulled his lower lip into his mouth, worrying it, his brow knitted.

Frustration tightened in Taako's jaw, hot and sharp at the back of his tongue. "Because otherwise the other option is me giving you a piece of my fucking mind about why any of you thought it was a good idea to risk the entire ... fucking ... everything! Just so you could ... I don't know what! Horse around?"

"I don't ... " Magnus tried to cut in, and failed. "I don't think ... "

"Because I am so fucking pissed at you right now, you have no idea how fucking pissed--"

"That's not what happened," Magnus finally managed to cut in. "That's not ... That's not what--"

"Says Mr. We Had Dinner And Built A Fire," Taako snapped.

"That's not what happened," Magnus insisted again, voice thick. He rubbed at his eyes, leaving shiny patches of moisture at their corners, his gaze burning into the floor. He looked devastated.

Magnus had looked dead when Taako had first brought him inside. There'd been nothing behind his eyes, not like there should have been, and the memory, when it rose fully-formed in Taako's mind, was like a kick to the chest. It was too much. Taako made a dismissive gesture and turned on his heel. He marched down the corridor, digging icy fingertips into his upper arms.

This time, Magnus's footsteps didn't follow.

\---

The suns flared into brightness up in the loft Magnus had slept in as a child. From the floor below he could see them swinging lazily from the ceiling like a pair of holiday lanterns.

He began to watch himself climb the ladder. The rungs were sturdy, the centers of them pale and smooth, worn from generations of feet and hands. There were clouds in the loft, too, plump and furred, lying around like cushions. The walls had been painted in shades of lavender to look like the sky.

"Hey, Magnus," Lup said. "Let us out."

Magnus knelt down beside a perfect circle cut out of the middle of the floor. There was water in it, perfectly level with the floorboards, the surface churning with tiny waves. They crested and fell, and crested and fell. Magnus could see, suddenly, as if taking a cross-section of the house, that this circle was only the top of an enormous, narrow-necked glass embedded under the floorboards.

"Magnus," said Barry. "Let us out?"

There was a row of four wooden chairs at the bottom of the glass.

"Magnus?" said Lucretia from the third chair. Her hair floated around her face.

"Let us out," said Davenport from the fourth. There was a strange light behind his eyes.

"Magnus?" Lup looked up, meeting Magnus's gaze from under the water. Her face distorted behind the waves.

Magnus stood. He had to do something. He had to save them.

The clouds had darkened. It must be about to storm. They lay in black piles all over the floor, way more of them than Magnus had remembered seeing before.

He had to do something.

He realized Taako was standing across the water from him, holding up a jacket.

"That isn't mine," Magnus said. It wasn't. But Taako continued to hold it out, stony-faced and motionless as a statue.

When Magnus reached out over the water, the sleeves met him halfway. They twisted up around his arms, then around his chest. They pinned his arms to his body, squeezing tighter and tighter, squeezing until he couldn't breathe.

Everything tilted, as if someone had grabbed the stem of that glass and pulled upward, turning the whole house sideways. Magnus tried to keep his footing, but it was impossible. The clouds were sliding over the floorboards, tipping off the edge. Water streamed from the hole in the floor. He fell and fell, the air roaring around him, until he slammed into the ground.

Magnus woke with a start.


	4. Chapter 4

_"Taako! Water breathing!" Lup whirled around from the water's edge and pointed frantically at her own mouth. Taako lunged to his feet, grabbing his wand out of his shirt as he went. Lup kicked off her boots and squirmed out of her jacket, and the instant the spell took hold she dove into the water._

_Taako and Barry both rushed to the edge. Lucretia joined them a moment later, journal abandoned on the stairs. They stared down at Lup's retreating form. The pale ribbon of her ponytail streamed behind her as she swam deeper and deeper into the darkness._

_A moment later her mind surged against Taako's. He clutched at one of the struts at the bottom of the stairs in surprise. Magnus was there, too, dazed and disoriented but desperately grateful._

__The Light was on a ledge on the side of a ravine, _Lup told Taako, businesslike but with a frantic undercurrent._ We were just a few feet off and missed the ledge. Magnus drifted out of the range of my spells.

Hi, _thought Magnus._

_"What happened?" Barry was asking, desperate concern on his upturned face. "We need to do something, we need to--"_

_Taako held up a finger, eyebrow arching, cutting him off mid-sentence with a "tsk". "It's cool, I got her on the line," he said, tapping one temple._

__Taako, you need to get him out of there, _Lup was telling him._ I'm not going to be able to keep up with him much longer. __

_Taako dropped his arms toward the water below, palms down. He slowly began to raise them, brow furrowed in concentration._

\---

Magnus stared unseeing at the ceiling, taking huge, shuddering breaths, heart racing out of control. His skin was clammy, damp with sweat. He lay there for a long time, his bare shoulders cold where the blankets had fallen down around them, but he couldn't move. He lay there until his pulse had stopped pounding, until his breaths felt like they were actually bringing in air.

Suddenly sleeping was the last thing he wanted to do. He finally sat up, heart still galloping a little faster than it should. Maybe a shower would clear his head.

He washed away the last of the evidence of his injuries, water pelting his back in a soothing rhythm. It was so warm. There'd been a chill in his bones that he hadn't even realized was there. Drowsiness began to tug at him once again, and as he toweled off he thought about going back to bed. A shock dropped suddenly through his stomach at the half-formed memory of his dream, though, and his calm was shattered. His heart tripped and raced.

Magnus tied the drawstring on a pair of loose pants into a bow and pulled a t-shirt over his head. He wouldn't have been able to explain it. What he remembered of the dream didn't sound very disturbing on the surface, but it had filled him with a dread that still hung in the corners of his mind like a fog.

He left his quarters with no real plan. He didn't feel hungry but it had to have been ages since he last ate. Magnus had no idea what kind of food they even had at the moment, but he made up his mind in an instant to go check.

When Magnus opened the door to the kitchen, he froze. Taako was washing dishes. He was sitting on a tall stool, long legs crossed at the knee, plate in one hand, wand in the other. He froze too, eyes fixed on Magnus over one shoulder. After a moment he turned away and set the clean plate on what was already a pretty hefty stack.

Magnus stepped over the threshold, and Taako lifted another plate.

"Need any help?" Magnus asked.

"No, I'm good," Taako answered. The leftover food on the plate he was holding vanished with a wave of his wand. He set it on the stack.

Magnus moved toward the fridge, something awful clenching in his throat. The prospect of the following two months being full of this terrible atmosphere made Magnus want to go back to bed and just never get up.

Opening the fridge made everything worse. At the front of the top shelf was a bowl with a note that read, "NOBODY BETTER EAT THIS. SIGNED, LUP". Barry's favorite mug was at the front, too, half full of what Magnus assumed was coffee that he'd been saving for later. The rest of the fridge was a disaster of leftovers, the merry clutter of six people sharing a space. Magnus stared into it, brows knitting together in a sudden surge of grief.

"I'm sorry," Taako said.

"What?" Magnus

Taako didn't turn to face him. His shoulders were pulled up towards his ears, one of them sliding a little out of the loose neckline of his sweater. He pushed another plate onto the stack with a scrape of ceramic. "Sorry I said that shit earlier."

Magnus shut the fridge. "Oh. I, uh ... "

Taako didn't offer any further explanation. He turned and glanced at Magnus for a moment, eyebrows knitted together. When he turned back he swept his long braid over one shoulder with a practiced hand. The end of it swung for a moment at the small of his back.

Magnus dropped his hand from where he'd still been clinging to the door of the fridge. He rocked forward on the balls of his feet in indecision, then moved toward the table and started gathering up dishes. It took several trips to set them all on the counter next to the sink, and he waited for Taako to set the plate he was holding on top of the others before grabbing up the entire stack and putting it away.

They cleaned the entire kitchen in silence.

\---

_Magnus was going to die._

_It was something he'd accepted as a possibility from the moment he'd agreed to Lup's plan, but ... Who was going to be next? Barry? The thought of any of his other crewmates dying in the same way he was about to filled Magnus with a hopeless panic._

_Before another thought could form in his head Lup's mind crashed back into his, frantic and blazing with power. The barrier burst into existence around Magnus's body, and he gasped for breath, coughing and spluttering. A moment later Taako's mind flared in their bond, too, a surge of determination grinding panic into the dirt with one boot._

_Magnus shivered helplessly. He was drenched, but the feeling of the twins in his mind made him feel almost desperately warm. It was almost as much of a relief as the air he was gulping down._

__The Light was on a ledge on the side of a ravine, _Lup was telling Taako._ We were just a few feet off and missed the ledge. Magnus drifted out of the range of my spells.

Hi, _thought Magnus. He was grinning to himself, teeth chattering, absolutely giddy with relief. He rubbed at his arms with both hands, trying to muster up even the slightest amount of warmth._

__Taako, you need to get him out of there, _Lup thought._ I'm not going to be able to keep up with him much longer. __

_A moment later there was a tug on Magnus's body from above, and relief sang through all of their minds as he felt himself begin to rise._

\---

"So what ... So what actually happened? I'm still a little ... unclear."

When Magnus broke the silence, Taako realized that they'd both been staring into space for gods knew how long. They were both sitting at the now-spotless kitchen table in an exhausted daze, Taako at one end and Mangus across the corner. The table was enormous. Seven people could comfortably fit around it. Now, the expanse of it seemed to dwarf the two of them. Magnus had his elbows near the edge of the tabletop, fingers interlaced near the center. Taako was slumped in his chair, head resting on the back, hands clasped over his stomach.

"Hm?"

"Earlier. When ... You know."

Taako blinked up at the ceiling. "We were all sitting around the fire," he began after a moment, eyebrows furrowed. "I went inside to lie down. Then I heard an explosion, so I came out to see what happened, and everyone was gone." Taako let his head roll to the side so that he could look at Magnus. "I did some magic to try and find them, but the only one I found was you."

Magnus nodded slowly.

Taako let his head roll back, so that he was looking once again at the ceiling.

"So ... What do we do now?" Magnus finally asked.

"Fuck if I know," Taako said, raising his shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. He rolled his head toward Magnus again, studying his face until Magnus reflexively met his eyes. They only held for a second before he looked away again, and Taako sighed. "You know I'm not mad anymore, right? You can just calm down, my man."

Magnus's eyes flicked back to Taako's. "Sorry."

"Yeah, yeah." Taako waved a hand. "It probably wasn't your fault, anyway."

They fell back into silence.

Taako sat up and began to examine his nails, pushing back the cuticle of his index finger with his thumbnail. "We don't usually spend a lot of time together, do we," he mused, and flicked his eyes up, watching Magnus for a reaction. "Or at least, not usually, you know, one on one?"

"No, I guess we don't," Magnus answered honestly, then threw a guilty glance Taako's way, as if he wasn't sure he should have taken it as a serious question after all.

"I'm going to level with you, broseph," Taako said, leaning forward, propping his elbows on the table. He steepled his fingers then let his hands fall forward, pointing across at Magnus. "This entire atmosphere we have going on here is probably the most awkward thing I have ever experienced, and I hate it."

Magnus gaped at him.

Taako dropped one hand to the table and set his chin in the heel of the other. "The way I see it, we can either stew in this for the next week, or ... however long it takes us to get over it, or we can just say 'fuck it' right now and agree that everything's okay now and everybody's friends."

"How exactly do you want to ... do that?" Magnus looked a little taken aback.

"First of all, I'm not going to bite your head off," Taako said. "I already apologized for the shit I said earlier, but I can do it again if that helps. I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. So, whatever's going on with you, just go ahead and get it out. Okay?"

Magnus stared at him for a long moment. "I still can't remember anything that happened, and that's freaking me out kind of a lot."

"Understandable, okay. Anything else?"

Magnus stared down at the table, the crease between his eyebrows deepening. When he finally looked up, it was with a frown. "Let me just ... This is the day I had, okay? I kind of woke up with a concussion, and that felt really bad, and then ... One," he held up a finger, "I found out that basically everyone is dead, and two," he held up another, "that you automatically blamed me for it, and it turns out you don't even know what actually happened? Now that I think about it I don't really think that's something I can just ... "

"This is exactly what I'm talking about," Taako interrupted, gesturing at Magnus over the table. "Less silence, more talking. Anything else?"

"Aren't you, like, concerned? About what happened to them?" Magnus made a wide gesture of disbelief. Taako kept his face carefully neutral. "Something _killed_ them, and I have no idea what you think _I_ could've possibly done that would've caused _that_ , and the fact that you jumped to that conclusion is kind of ... " He trailed off, dropping his hands audibly back to the table. "I don't know. Shitty?"

"We already established that I'm sorry about that," Taako said, eyebrows furrowing. Something strange and cold was spreading through his bloodstream, all the way to his fingertips.

Magnus scrubbed a hand over his face. "I guess I'm just having trouble with the part where I'm supposed to pretend that we're friends?"

The bottom dropped out of Taako's stomach. His eyes widened.

Magnus rushed to correct himself. "I mean, we are friends, we're just not ... " He trailed off, eyes wide.

"No, you're right," Taako said numbly, spine ramrod straight. "We're not friends, are we?"

Silence yawned between them, and this time, it was Magnus that left without a word.

\---

_Fish were spawning by the millions near the sea floor, so consumed by the thrall of mating that they never noticed the enormous tangle of tentacles that swept through their number. It sucked them in by the hundreds through a wicked, curved beak. It ate and ate until the bright disk that traveled far above it sailed all the way to the edge of the world._

_When the creature was finally sated, it spun down into the crevasse it called its own in preparation to lay and wait for hunger to drive it out again. It sank through the darkness. For the moment it was satisfied._

_For a very long time, almost as long as the creature was able to remember, there'd been something waiting for him on a ledge, about a third of the way down. It was a light, but brighter and more wonderful than the light that traveled across the top of the world every day. The creature couldn't remember precisely when it had arrived, but the fact that it had come from up there was undeniably true._

_The creature loved this light, more than it had ever or could ever have loved anything. The light had needed to be found, and the creature had found it. It needed to be beheld, and the creature did that with a devotion it had never had anywhere else to direct._

_But this time, when the creature sank down through the expanse of the ravine, the light was gone._

__The light was gone. __

_The creature bellowed in rage and confusion, limbs twisting and curling in desperation. It thrashed through the water, searching for it, searching desperately for any trace of the pure, holy light it was able to cast on the mind. The creature would never leave the light alone again if it was able to find it. It would carry it down to the depths and never return. It wouldn't need to. This light was far brighter and more precious than the one that lit the world above._

_As the creature searched, that bright disk crossed the world more times than the creature could have named. The sea floor was rising, turning the water far more shallow than the creature had ever experienced. There was a trace of something, though, the barest change in current, as if a single fish was disturbing a still pool with each lazy stroke of its tail._

_It was here._

_The light was here._

_The sun had just dropped below the horizon when the first tentacle silently breached the surface of the water._

**Author's Note:**

> my [blog](https://reinkist.tumblr.com/), where i post my own fanart and reblog lots of taz stuff, amongst other things


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